


The Shortest Path

by fansofcollisions



Category: Okja (2017)
Genre: Gen, Heist, Minor Violence, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 15:37:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11512362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fansofcollisions/pseuds/fansofcollisions
Summary: Two freedom fighters without an exit strategy, a bomb that may or may not be disarmed, and a healthy dose of hastily improvised weaponry. 3, 2, 1, let's jam.





	The Shortest Path

There’s a 30 second countdown, because no authentic heist goes off without red digits flashing the blocky time before things go boom. The end of the world is measured in the space between 24 and 23 – the moment of rapture following a familiar pattern – 11 10 – the lights go out right before you say goodnight – 2 1 – poof

Nothing.

No haze of smoke, no sprinkler barrage of cyanic gas, no pepper spray-wielding guards rushing to the rescue of poor, defenseless corporate America. The blazing alarm goes silent.

K goes silent too, and Jay compensates for the lack of noise. He drops the metal pliers to the floor with a dull clatter that echoes about the dark space, ghosting over linoleum and trickling beneath the shadows of aluminum desks. He scuffles backwards and twists into the kind of ungraceful lunge that leaves a mark on impact.  K only barely manages to duck out of the path of injury. The tumble leaves Jay sprawled instead against a chair leg – one last unholy clatter as it topples over – clutching nothing.

“The hell are you doing,” K hisses. Jay flicks his eyes back at the silent bomb, its display frozen in an array of 0s. K barely contains his rolled eyes. “Hero. If it goes off, we’re dead anyway. The whole building wouldn’t make a difference.”

Jay picks himself up off the floor, careful of the chair this time. “Right.”

“Red must have cut the lines.”

“Would that stop this?” Jay gestures vaguely at the bomb.

“Maybe. It’s Bluetooth… new age remote detonation. I never finished reading the manual.”

“Is it done for good?”

K shrugs. An emergency light starts flashing in the corner, and his fingers twitch towards the fallen pliers. The sounds of tramping footsteps reverberate through the floor, muddled by steel rafters. He grabs the pliers firmly and starts to stand.

“Then we wait.” K pauses at the fingers grasping his sleeve, tugging him back down to the floor.

His grip tightens, but he goes down without a fuss. “We’ll be caught.”

“Not if Red gets to us first.”

“if she cut the lines, she’s miles away.”

“Then we can’t get caught until she’s not miles away.”

“…only one of us needs to babysit.”

“Don’t even think it.” The _hero_ is muttered softly, but not so much than K doesn’t catch it. He snorts in spite of himself, in spite of their situation.

(A possibly-but-not-certainly dormant bomb and unwanted bodies heading up the stairs. Nobody was supposed to be in the blast radius. Casualties are not their modus operandi. This was not in _the plan_.)

There are three routes of entry. K catalogues them one by one. Far door, near door, a window into an adjoining meeting room. The far door is the least concerning: the path to the bomb is blocked by rows of generic office equipment – plenty of cover. The near door is only a row o away – nothing but a single line desks for defence, and a corner cabinet with a Keurig that might be coaxed for a few cups of hot liquid deterrent, but not much else. The window lies along the third wall and could be smashed in a pinch, but its adjoining door is locked. He can’t tell if there’s a route out from the meeting room on the other side without more light. The fourth wall holds nothing but locked offices.

With the echoing architecture of minimalist office décor, they won’t be able to sense which door is the entry point to watch till the guards reach this floor.

They’re fucked, essentially.

“What’ve you got?” K flinches as a bang goes off below them – there goes a lock, or maybe a misfire on a too-tight turn.

“Not much,” Jay admits. “You?”

K glances around, taking in the sullen desks and empty coatracks illuminated by the vague red haze of the bomb display. “Did you ever watch that movie…“ Jay stares at him.

“Okay, I know it probably wasn’t on a list approved by the Christian Family Association of Maryland, but whatever. What I’m saying is-” He pulls a phone down from the desk beside him and winds the cord around his knuckles like a boxing wrap, places the box between his knees and yanks. With one pop, the cord comes loose.

“-I think we better Home Alone this shit.”

* * *

 

The second countdown, doom less certain this time, is marked by the flash of the emergency sign. Red flash, packages of pencils disappear into the murky depths. Red flash, another telephone loses its head. Red flash, a cabinet shuts. Red flesh, the hiss and gurgle of coffee brewing. Red flash, a moment stolen in passing, as cheerful a grimace as K can manage as he wraps scotch tape around a ream of rolled paper. Red flash, the light goes out, obscured by a forgotten rainjacket. No more flashes.

A bang, somewhere down the hall behind the far door – there’s the entrance to watch. The countdown ends. The bomb still reads 00:00 in the moment before they cover it with another rainjacket. K and Jay regroup at its feet.

Three gentle taps on his wrist, a clear signal in the darkness. _Ready?_ Then Jay is gone, and K moves.

The first foot explodes through the door, wrenching ball bearing joints from hinges with an awful crack. “Fan out,” says the leader, and her voice carries into every crevasse.

The jackknife _thwack_ of boots parading into the room drowns the sound of skittering from the far corner. K takes stock from his own corner of the room.

The guards hold batons in their hands, balanced on flashlights – four of them, but count the guns on their belts, and you’d only reach one. They aren’t equipped for lethal force. The first responders wear what their job necessitates: ready mostly for unruly drunks camped on the eaves of the foyer, less for burglars, not at all for bomb-laden freedom fighters.

He looks at the bomb. Even from this distance K sees the amber glow creep out from below the fabric, seeping into a red halo on the floor.

The skittering starts again, too loud to be ignored, but K knows (hopes) it’s only because he knows what to listen for.

The leader’s hand flies up, calling for a pause. Dead silence, marred only by the now-very-evident trickling sound, like rainmaker pitter-patter. Then the first guard goes down and all hell breaks loose.  

K doesn’t wait long enough to hear the crack of skull on floor before he’s on the move, laying down filament as he moves. One loop around desk legs, but not the chairs – too light, too likely to scratch out his location. He darts around the desk legs and ends where the leader’s feet had been, now removed to the doorway to investigate the fallen guard. Damn. Not enough length to span the end of the path, but enough to cut off the first few entrances to the centre of the room. They’d been lucky to find this much boxing tape to begin with.

The commotion doesn’t last for long and he ducks beneath a desk before the flashlight beam can graze him. Apparently, the leader has decided on caution over carelessness, and while he’d like to be pleased they’re being taken seriously for once the resumed tread of boots under silent direction is less than comforting. He catches a glimpse of black hair over the lip of the next row, shining in monochrome before the flashlight moves elsewhere. When the beam returns, it meets air and particulate and reaches to the far wall. Where did that guard go? In the darkness it’s hard to stay oriented and the mental map of positions he’d been hoarding grows muddled, then fades entirely.

From his lowly vantage point the halo around the bomb is fiercer than ever. They should have done a better job with that, but how do you cover something large enough it took two to lug in the first place?

The sound of footsteps echoes from all directions, and belatedly he realizes this is probably his chance to move undetected – still, if he can get to the bomb, maybe-

The heel of a boot clips his outstretched pinky and he recoils back under the desk, but misses the entrance by an inch and slams his shoulder into the solid leg instead.

“Hey-!” the guard shouts and elation punches K’s belly and down into his gut, the shot of adrenaline sending him scrambling just far enough to avoid the guard’s descent as his foot hits the filament barrier and he faceplants into the chair to K’s right. He’s got his hand over the man’s mouth before a moan of pain can escape, and a quick application of chloroform-soaked rag eases the path to unconsciousness. (It’s not a supply found in office buildings, generally, but it’s standard backpack equipment for ALF missions.)

The two remaining guards have to have heard their compatriot’s first cry and corresponding thud but they don’t call back. K creeps along the pathway between desks until he reaches the halo – if he’s going to be caught, it might as well be at the scene of the crime.

They’ve bought five minutes at most, but still no sign of Red or rescue.

A beam of light crawls along the offices on the side wall, pausing on name plaques and bare doors. The next trap springs: _wub wub wub wub_. The rolls of paper are apparently not as effective as the pencils were, and the sound halts with no corresponding human-sized crash. The beam focuses with deadly accuracy. “I’ve got one!” the guard calls, steady and calm, before Jay’s screech rings out and both the flashlight and baton fly out of the man’s hand into the nearest office door. The one remaining flashlight trains on the pair quick enough for K to glimpse the whirl of a telephone receiver connecting with hard bone, then the makeshift nunchucks whipping around their arc and delivering a solid neck blow with the second receiver. Jay’s eyes gleam a moment before the two men disappear down onto the dark floor.

The leader’s footsteps round the back corner as K wraps the chloroform rag around the pliers and hurls them as hard as he can towards the end of the row, hoping beyond hope he doesn’t accidentally put Jay’s eye out. The package connects with _something_ , and moments later the struggle is over, and the victor is coming straight for him.

He pulls back from the figure hurtling down the aisle and ducks behind the bomb.  A hand clutching an empty pair of pliers breaches the halo of light, staining familiar veins red. He reaches out and raps the knuckles with his. Jay freezes.

Seconds later, Jay’s face is thrown into full relief. K pulls his hand back out of the floodlit row. He’s hidden completely behind the bomb’s mass, but Jay is undeniably caught.

There are three mugs of water at the bomb’s base – the last line of defence. Not hot enough to scald anymore, but enough to startle at least. He nudges the first till it hits the edge of Jay’s hand, then reaches for the second.

Jay wastes no time dropping the pliers and hurling the first offering, mug and all. There’s a high yelp, the porcelain shatters against the floor, and the halo is broken this time by a stream of water, branching like vinery until it meets the edge of Jay’s pantleg. The second mug meets much the same fate and the stream grows wider, its pathways merging into a single thick branch.

The third and final mug is in position when K hears the gun click, almost masked by its owners heavy breathing.

“Stay back,” the leader calls, and almost in the same breath says, “What is that?”

Jay stays silent, the final cup resting against his thigh. The halo disappears, as does the rainjacket. The exposed display lights up the gun barrel in ghostly red, its snout balanced on an arm and undeniably trained on K. He’s caught in the red light of the display and white flashlight both.

A sharp exhale of breath. “What is that?” she repeats. Her finger twitches spasmodically and her aim weaves as she steps back. In the dim light, her face is frightened. Young.

She’s night security. She wasn’t trained for explosives.

The finger twitches towards the trigger. Something clatters beside him. The finger tenses, then starts to squeeze.

“Hey!”

The gun and flashlight both swing back toward Jay, and he’s standing now, dripping hand clutching dripping pliers, and K doesn’t get a moment to call out before Jay plunges the metal teeth straight down into the second red 0. The scene erupts in a flurry of golden sparks, then all remaining lights go out.

It’s only years of _first goddamn rule of reconnaissance_ that keeps him from calling out Jay’s name as he flings himself forward, pawing at the wet ground until he catches a soaked shirtsleeve between his fingers. The fabric is rough beneath his hand, like crackling in old firewood – charred and torn.

His other hand hits the fallen flashlight and he flicks it on with trembling fingers to find the path laid out before him – the leader, fallen backwards, her boot half-melted, and Jay sprawled out at his side. The fabric beneath his thumb gives way to skin marred with a tree of lines, as though the halo of red had been injected beneath the skin. The pliers are still clutched in Jay’s petrified fist.

The display sputters, but the bomb remains un-blown.

1, 2, 3... He grips harder than he needs to to check the steady heartbeat beneath the lattice of burns. He counts up to 30 before letting go.

Jay only stirs when K shines the flashlight into his eye.  A quick flash, sobriety-test style, brings him back to consciousness with a cough. The pliers clatter to the floor.

“You stupid…” Jay blinks at him blearily. “What if it had gone off?”

“That was the plan, originally,” Jay says, and squeezes his eyes closed with another cough.

“Not with us here!”

“She was going to shoot.”

“We could have all died.”

Jay sits up, swinging his shoulder back in a roll. He flexes the injured hand and winces.

“Providence was in our favour.”

“You could have fried your brains out.”

“Like I said, providence.”

“... You’re going to have to get that looked at.”

Jay glances down at his arm. K shines the flashlight onto the burn. He can’t see Jay’s expression when he realizes what he’s done to his arm, but he hears the small, wincing chuckle.

“What?”

“Now we match.” He holds out his forearm and grabs K’s. K transfers the flashlight to the other hand and shines it on their conjoined arms. The trail end of “sacred” crawls into the space where their skin meets, bleeding black into the red burns.

“Yeah, but yours doesn’t mean anything.”

His flashlight is only quick enough to catch the tail end of Jay’s expression before it slips into its usual stalwart mask.

“I’ll let you know.”

“ _Shit._ ”

There’s no heavy bootfall to warm them of the new intruders into the room this time, and too late K realizes he’s forgotten the gun, lost somewhere under the sea of desks. He flicks off the light, but it’s too late – the footsteps close in with alarming surety of step.

Resting on his non-injured hand, Jay pulls himself up into a crouch and they wait out their fate side by side.

“What the _fuck-_ “ followed by a string of far more imaginative curses in Red’s unmistakable tongue may be the sweetest sound he’s ever heard.

“Here!” he calls. His voice cracks halfway through the word.

“What did you two do to this room?” She shines a veritable spotlight on them and grins.

“What we had to,” Jay says solemnly. K snorts at the melodrama, and pulls them both to their feet. His toe nudges something on the way up. The gun. He glances backward. The woman behind him still lays motionless. The puddle around her feet glows red.

His relieved grin fades.

_What we had to._

**Author's Note:**

> You've heard about PWP (porn without plot) but say, have you heard of PWP (PLOT without plot)? 
> 
> So here, have a situation with no context, a scene with no explanation. Why are they trying to blow up a building? WHO CARES! Unimportant to my bigger question: has ALF killed? Would they kill? Things to explore in a sequel movie? (Please Bong Joon-ho, please.)
> 
> Mostly though, I just want about a 347 fics of this incredibly interesting team doing zany heist missions. Maybe someone else can pick up the torch after me, since free time is lacking in my life.


End file.
